Las Vegas During the Ice Age

    During the Ice Age, Las Vegas looked dramatically different from the bustling desert city we know today, but it also defies the stereotypical image of an icy, snow-blanketed tundra. While vast glaciers covered much of North America during the Pleistocene epoch, the Las Vegas Valley sat south of these ice sheets, remaining ice-free. Instead, it was a lush and temperate environment characterized by expansive grasslands, marshes, and woodlands. The climate was cooler and wetter than today.

The valley was home to a fascinating array of megafauna, including mammoths, camels, ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats, which roamed freely across its grassy plains and forested slopes. Fossils of smaller mammals, that still live here today, have been found as well. Fossil evidence from Ice Age Fossils State Park shows that Las Vegas supported a dynamic ecosystem where prehistoric creatures thrived in this semi-arid but fertile landscape. Unlike the frozen wastelands depicted in movies, the Ice Age in Las Vegas was a vibrant, biologically rich environment, where water and greenery contrasted sharply with the arid desert we see today. This unexpected depiction challenges common assumptions about Ice Age environments and highlights the complexity of Earth's climatic history.

What are the Camelops?

   Camelops hesternus, or Yesterday’s Camel, is an extinct species of ancient camel that used to call this area home. Fossils of Camelops are some of the most common fossils found in the Tule Springs area. All camels and their relatives, including llamas and alpacas, got their start here in North America, where the ancestors to modern camels can be traced back nearly 45,000 years. The first camel was much smaller than modern camels, it was only slightly larger than a jackrabbit. Yesterday’s camel likely looked very similar to modern camels, with one unknown, we don’t know if it had humps like its modern relatives. Camel humps are made of soft tissue that doesn’t typically get preserved with the bones and so far, evidence of Yesterday’s camel having a hump hasn’t been found.